Having passed her practicum with flying colors — due as much to Sonny’s tutelage as to the rigorous courses necessary to secure a psychotronic systems engineering degree — she’d taken a job at Madison’s spaceport, which was being rebuilt almost from the ground up. As part of a ground-based team of psychotronic specialists, she worked in tandem with orbital engineers, calibrating the new space station’s psychotronic systems as each new module was mated with the others in orbit, then synched to the spaceport’s ground-based controllers. High-tech labs on Vishnu had supplied the replacement components for Ziva Two, including the modules Kafari was responsible for correctly calibrating, programming, and fitting into the existing psychotronic computer matrix.
Difficult as it was, she loved her job. With luck, her work would create the chance for others to work, again, as well. Madison’s northwest sector, hit so hard during the fighting, was now jammed with construction crews.
By some small miracle, the Engineering Hub — the nerve center of any surface-based spaceport — had survived, undamaged by Deng missiles. With that infrastructure intact, the cost of rebuilding was far lower than it might have been, despite obfuscations by POPPA’s chosen spokespersons.
Everywhere POPPA turned its attention, discord followed. Kafari had been less than amused to learn that a major POPPA rally had been scheduled for the same afternoon as her follow-up appointment with the ob-gyn clinic. She should’ve been able to finish her appointment and leave well in advance of the rally’s starting time, but she’d already been here an hour-and-a-half, waiting while emergency cases came into the clinic and bumped others with appointments. There’d been more than a dozen walk-ins so far, all of them presenting the emergency medical vouchers issued to the jobless and their families. Those vouchers meant a patient had to be seen, regardless of caseload, regardless of the bearer’s ability to pay anything for the services of physicians, nurse-practitioners, or medical technicians conducting diagnostic testing.
Kafari was not coldhearted, even though she questioned the long-term sustainability of such a program, and certainly didn’t feel that those without money should be denied access to medical care they — and in this case, their unborn children — needed. But it was a financial drain their faltering economy couldn’t possibly maintain for long. It was downright irritating that she’d missed half an afternoon’s work to keep an appointment that others had bumped, by just walking in off the street. And if she didn’t get out of the clinic soon, she’d be caught right in the middle of the crush gathering for the POPPA rally scheduled to begin in an hour’s time. There was already an immense crowd outside, streaming through downtown Madison toward the rally’s main stage, which had been set up in Lendan Park, across Darconi Street from Assembly Hall.
There wasn’t much she could do about any of it, however, and Kafari needed this appointment. So she dried her face carefully, reapplied cosmetics, and returned to the waiting room, where she eased herself down into a chair and tried without much success to ignore the news coverage of the impending rally. An entire host of POPPA luminaries appeared on camera, granting interviews that constituted little more than a steady stream of POPPA doctrine, most of it aimed directly at the masses of unemployed urbanites. Gust Ordwyn, rumored to be Vittori Santorini’s right-hand propagandist, was holding forth on the manufacturing crisis that had sent heavy industry crashing to a virtual halt.
“We can’t afford five more years of President Andrews’ insane policies on mining and manufacturing. Jefferson’s mines stand silent and empty. Sixteen thousand miners have lost their jobs, their medical coverage, their very homes. John Andrews doesn’t even have a plan to put these people back to work! Enough is enough.
Jefferson needs new answers. New ideas. A new philosophy for rebuilding our economy. One that includes the needs of ordinary, hard-working men and women, not the profit margin of a huge conglomerate that holds half its assets off-world. I ask you, Pol, why do Jefferson’s biggest companies transfer their profits off-world when our own people are jobless and starving? Why do they pour huge sums of money into off-world technology instead of rebuilding our own factories, so people can go back to work? It’s indecent, it’s unethical. It’s got to stop.”
Pol Jankovitch, predictably, did nothing at all to point out that Gust Ordwyn’s accusations, like Nassiona Santorini’s “questions” were not designed to be answered factually, but to insinuate a state of affairs that did not, in fact, exist. Kafari was in a position to know exactly what was being ordered from off-world companies: high-tech items Jefferson literally could not manufacture yet.
Pol Jankovitch wasn’t interested in the truth. Neither was his boss, media mogul Dexter Courtland. They were interested solely in what message was likeliest to increase viewership, advertising profits, and personal bank accounts. Men like Vittori Santorini and Gust Ordwyn used fools like Courtland and Jankovitch, in an under-the-table handshake that benefitted everyone involved. Except, of course, the average Jeffersonian. And most of them were blinded by the rhetoric, the wild promises of wealth, the feeling of power that comes with participating in something big enough to make the government sit up and take notice.
None of which bolstered Kafari’s low spirits.
Neither did the next three speakers. Camden Cathmore was a spin expert who constantly quoted the latest results of his favorite tool, the “popular sentiment” poll, so blatantly manipulated, the results meant nothing at all. Carin Avelaine bleated endlessly about “socially conscious education programs” she wanted to implement. And then there was Khroda Arpad, a refugee from one of the hard-hit worlds beyond the Silurian Void, who spoke passionately about the horrors of war as experienced first-hand. She had lost her children in the fighting, which left Kafari’s heart aching for her, but Kafari was less impressed by the direction Khroda’s grief had taken her. The refugee had launched a crusade to convince as many people as possible that a planet-wide military draft was about to be enacted for the purpose of sending as many of the urban poor and their children as possible to be shot to pieces under alien guns.
None of it made any logical sense and very little of it was even remotely accurate. But the women in this room were eating it up and so, apparently, was the crowd outside. And so were thousands upon thousands more, in every major urban center on Jefferson. Kafari was actually relieved when her name was called by the nurse, allowing her to escape the ugly mood in the waiting room.
The exam was the only thing she’d encountered all day to reassure her fears.
“You’re doing fine and the baby’s doing fine,” the doctor smiled. “Another couple of months and you’ll be holding her.”
Kafari returned the smile, although a mist had clouded her eyes. “We’ve got the nursery all set up. Everything’s ready. Except her.”
The doctor’s smile broadened into a grin. “She will be. Take advantage of the next couple of months to put your feet up and rest every chance you get. You’ll be running on mighty short sleep, once she’s born.”
By the time Kafari re-dressed and checked out at the counter, the crowd outside had swelled to a river of people, a thick and slow-moving stream that jammed the street, with every person in it — except Kafari — trying to get to Lendan Park. Kafari’s groundcar was in a parking garage three blocks closer to the park, which left Kafari struggling to push herself and her distended belly through the close-packed jam of people. She could smell cheap cologne, unwashed bodies, flatulence, and alcohol. Within a single city block, she found herself fighting a trickle of panic. She didn’t like crowds. The last time she’d been near a crowd anywhere close to this size, it had turned on her. Had tried its utmost to kill her.